Route Review: Worsley and RHS Bridgewater

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Beth Craigen

Route Review: Worsley and RHS Bridgewater

Published on February 18, 2026

3 min read

OS Champion Beth Craigen explores a stunning route from our Pathfinder walking guide, Greater Manchester Outstanding Circular Walks. Beth chose to follow one of the 28 beautiful circular routes in our new book, which took her through the varied landscape around Worsley, RHS Bridgewater and the Bridgewater Canal.

Worsley and RHS Bridgewater Circular Walk

When you work a lot of weekend mornings like I do, its great to have some routes close to home in your back pocket that you can sneak out onto in the afternoon after work. The new OS Maps book – Greater Manchester – Outstanding Circular Walks has proved very handy for this as well as longer day walks. Greater Manchester is also a great place to visit for a trip for those who are further afield too. Its got everything from urban cityscapes and historic industry to rolling green hills, shining reservoirs and beautiful woodland. We are very lucky to have it on our doorstep.

We chose to check out the Worsley and RHS Bridgwater circular walk as it was a good length to get in in the afternoon before sunset (2 ¾ hrs approx.) and wasn’t too far from home to the start.

The route officially starts from the train station at Worsley which is great for easy access and there are also car parks where you could drop in at other sections of the loop. We started in the south near the canal with the section through Worsley Woods. Its easy to drop in anywhere around the loop and still follow the instructions and map.

It was a lovely, varied walk with a mix of woodland, old railway line paths, urban parks and canal paths. We enjoyed the tranquillity of the woodland which was bursting with fungi this month. The loop line (old railway line cycling and walking) path sections were just long enough to be practical in connecting the route but not too long to get boring, as can sometimes be the case with long straight easy paths.

If you wanted to pop into RHS Bridgewater, the route does call right alongside it so you could make a stop along the way to visit some more exotic nature or just grab a brew in the cafe. As the route walks along the edge of the RHS Bridgwater land, its always interesting to see the ‘behind the scenes’ bits where we spotted a buzzard hunting and had a nosy at their wood processing workshop.

The guidance in the book about the terrain, timings and transport were super useful and the description of the walk was helpful coupled with the map. The author has chosen some lovely points of interest along the way such as Worsley Delph and gave us a snippet of the history of which we could read more on the sign boards when we arrived.

We are looking forward to trying out some of the other route recommendations in the book as we check out other parts of Greater Manchester that we don’t know or to find some hidden gems in places we know well. With walks that explore little bits of the whole area, there’s plenty for us to enjoy!

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If you enjoyed the Worlsey and RHS Bridgewater circular walk with Beth then you can follow more of Beth’s adventures on her Instagram page @bethskeptsecrets.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Beth Craigen (Barrett) (@bethskeptsecrets)

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